Somebody's Luggage

by Charles Dickens

There from time to time I stared at it and stared at it,
till it seemed to grow big and grow little, and come forward at me and
retreat again, and go through all manner of performances resembling
intoxication. When this had lasted weeks,--I may say months, and not be
far out,--I one day thought of asking Miss Martin for the particulars of
the Two sixteen six total. She was so obliging as to extract it from the
books,--it dating before her time,--and here follows a true copy:

Mem.: January 1st, 1857. He went out after dinner, directing luggage to
be ready when he called for it. Never called.

* * * * *

So far from throwing a light upon the subject, this bill appeared to me,
if I may so express my doubts, to involve it in a yet more lurid halo.
Speculating it over with the Mistress, she informed me that the luggage
had been advertised in the Master's time as being to be sold after such
and such a day to pay expenses, but no farther steps had been taken. (I
may here remark, that the Mistress is a widow in her fourth year. The
Master was possessed of one of those unfortunate constitutions in which
Spirits turns to Water, and rises in the ill-starred Victim.)

My speculating it over, not then only, but repeatedly, sometimes with the
Mistress, sometimes with one, sometimes with another, led up to the
Mistress's saying to me,--whether at first in joke or in earnest, or half
joke and half earnest, it matters not: